


We Are [ ]root

by longwhitecoats



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
Genre: Agender Character, F/F, Friendship, Grief/Mourning, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-03
Updated: 2014-08-03
Packaged: 2018-02-11 15:48:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2073960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/longwhitecoats/pseuds/longwhitecoats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The pot isn’t very big, but like everything Rocket owns, it does what it needs to: it contains soil, vents in air, holds water.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Are [ ]root

5.

The pot isn’t very big, but like everything Rocket owns, it does what it needs to: it contains soil, vents in air, holds water. The first time they pull over at a new planet, Rocket leaps out of the ship and immediately starts testing soil composition. _You learned about soil composition?_ Gamora says, expression as incredulous as her impassive warrior’s face ever gets, and Rocket just shrugs. _I prioritize_ , he replies, because he feels shy of saying what he means; but what he means is, _I don’t gotta lot of years left, and trees take a long time to grow_.

Gamora watches him for a while, and then, to his surprise, she helps him fill up little cups with soil and take them back to the ship for testing. Rocket doesn’t tell her what the test results are, and she doesn’t ask.

Rocket also doesn’t tell her that when he’s done testing them, he pours the samples into his bedroll and sleeps that way, curled around the little pot, inhaling the smell of soft, good earth.

 

1.

Rocket dreams. The world is a haze of green and gold, warm and living, and there are no machines in his back, no bloody-gloved scientists grabbing at his fur. Cool wind brushes his face, and leaves rustle around him. Rocket has never in his life been so happy.

Then he wakes, and his lover is still there; and this, _this_ is the moment, the happiest moment of his life.

“Hey,” he croaks, his throat raspy with sleep, and Groot keeps growing tendrils around them both, cocooning them together in a private, verdant world.

 

ii.

Nebula’s tongue is icy-hot, burning down past Gamora’s navel toward the waistband of her leathers, and Gamora is whimpering _No, stop, please stop_ as Nebula begins to unfasten everything. Images flash under her eyelids: the way Nebula watches her in Thanos’ throne room. The way Nebula grips her arm to correct her when they train together. The way Nebula is always measuring how fast Gamora is (in every sense), how hard it would be to catch her (in only one sense that matters).

Gamora hates the way Nebula moves, this creeping truth she doesn’t want to admit: how Nebula is never careful, but always precise; never patient, but always waiting. Just like all of Thanos’ daughters.

She’s huffing hard breaths between Gamora’s thighs now, hands gripping Gamora’s forearms, reminding her how she’s trapped, how there’s nowhere else to go even if she leaves, because no one else will ever, ever understand her like this.

Gamora comes into Nebula’s mouth in a hot, sick rush of fluid, and she makes no protest when Nebula finally disrobes and enters her.

 

3.

It’s not like most of their jobs go _well_ , but Rocket’s never had a job go this _bad_ before. They barely make it out of the prison before it drops out of orbit, its stabilizers destroyed by a faulty fuse box that Rocket had thought, had just _known_ he could fix, but he couldn’t. Now Groot is down to one long limb, hopping awkwardly into the escape pod behind Rocket seconds before it goes down. “I am Groot,” Groot says mournfully, and Rocket snarls, “Oh, it’ll grow _back_ for fuck’s sake,” strung out on anger; and then the adrenaline spike suddenly recedes, leaving Rocket empty, and he just collapses against the cold metal shell of the pod, shaking.

“I can’t protect you like I want,” he whispers to Groot, and Groot says what Groot always says, but what Groot means is, _I’ll protect us both_. Rocket knows that.

But it doesn’t help much.

 

iv.

“No,” Nebula says, and shoves Gamora away, hard. “We’re done.”

“We’re never done,” Gamora says. “Come on.” They’re alone in the throne room; Ronan loves to keep them waiting, and Gamora is bored and scared and beyond caring what Ronan thinks. Let him see them. Let him think they’re savages. He’s not wrong.

Nebula lets out a low sound that could be a growl, and Gamora should be worried, maybe, but the game’s not up yet, Nebula doesn’t know that Gamora plans to betray them all. Yet. So she ignores it, pushes back, pushes Nebula up against the wall and slides a hand between her legs, finding her hot, and liquid, and ready.

“Fuck you,” Nebula says, wrapping her hands around Gamora’s throat; but then she wraps her legs around Gamora’s waist, too, and they fuck like that, against the rock wall in a place that smells like death, and Gamora closes her eyes and tries to imagine being enclosed, enfolded, by someone who loves you.

 

vi.

By the third planet, Gamora is sick to death of _Awesome Mix Vol. 2_ , but she doesn’t want to say anything about it, so she takes to wandering around outside. Sometimes she hunts, because she can, and there are a few prey animal species here that she knows; sometimes she sits in the long white grass and lets memories wash over her.

After a while, Rocket finds her.

“Hey,” he says, without much spirit. Rocket is quieter these days, nervous; he hates being more than a few feet from the pot in which Groot is growing. But he’s here, sitting nearby. Maybe this is what friends do, Gamora thinks.

“They don’t get it,” Rocket says at last. He’s rubbing his paws over one another again and again, as if he were washing them; it’s a curious gesture to Gamora, alien, and she can’t tell what it means. “Groot’s fine. Y’know? Groot will live. But—” and then Rocket just shakes his head, stops rubbing his hands, and goes still.

Gamora asks, “But you don’t know if it’ll be the same?”

“Sure.” Rocket shrugs. “That’s—sure, who wouldn’t worry about that? But that’s bullshit, at the end of the day, because if you really—if you matter to each other, that’s enough. You work through whatever that is. So no, it’s not that.”

He sighs. “It’s that there’s something missing, y’know?”

Gamora thinks about this. About Nebula tearing her hand free. Falling from the ship. About reaching and reaching and never being able to catch.

“Something used to make you whole,” she says, half to herself, “even if you didn’t understand why.” She stretches out her legs on the ground, leans back on her hands like she’s seen Rocket do. It opens up her chest to the sky, forces her gaze up: a wide, pale heaven, full of thousands of suns and planets and stars, but only one Nebula.

“And now it’s back to the beginning,” Rocket adds.

“No,” Gamora says. “Not the beginning. Not if you understand what it is you had.”

Rocket looks at her then, his black eyes wide and vulnerable, and she thinks she sees tears in them. She doesn’t know what to do, so she just looks back, lets him see her just as she’s seeing him. And then:

“You said everyone has dead people,” she says softly. “Sometimes having living people is worse.”

They sit until the sun goes down and the moons come up, and then Rocket goes back to the ship. Gamora stays. Eventually she gets hungry and turns back. They’re all sitting around a fire, and Peter Quill is explaining something called marsh-mellows while _More Than A Feeling_ blasts from the ship’s speakers. She and Rocket exchange a look, and then she slides back into the group, warm and comfortable, like putting on her favorite belt.

She’s not sure if she’s waiting for anything or not. But she can be patient.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much to [thingswithwings](http://archiveofourown.org/users/thingswithwings/pseuds/thingswithwings) for a thoughtful, swift beta read. <3


End file.
